The present invention is related to systems and methods for capturing, processing, displaying, and/or transmitting images. In particular, the present invention is related to the capture, processing, displaying, and/or transmission of images in a mobile environment, where power conservation is of high importance
Charged coupled devices and CMOS pixel arrays have been used to detect images. The detected image information is acquired from the pixel array in the form of an analog electrical signal, and is then converted from an analog electrical signal to a digital electrical signal using an analog to digital converter. Such implementations include reading each of the pixels from the pixel array, and digitally processing the pixels after conversion to digital signals.
In some cases a single image sensor device is used in a multitude of configurations and, in particular, in a multiple of image resolutions. In those cases, the resolution of the pixel array fits with the highest needed resolution. For lower resolution, the image read from the sensor is electrically manipulated for lower resolution. The power consumption of the device, however, remains constant regardless of the configuration. In this way, the lower resolution configurations consume the same amount of power which is consumed for the highest resolution configurations.
In some cases, two analog to digital converters are utilized to read the various pixels, for example, one converting the odd-numbered pixels and the other converting the even numbered pixels. Use of two converters doubles the power consumption needed for the two analog to digital converters. Even when working with reduced resolution images, the two analog to digital converters consume power, because giving up the odd or the even numbered pixels would result in lost color information.
The analog circuits as well as the digital circuits remain in operation even when a limited Field Of View (FOV) cropped picture is output. Powering these unused analog circuits results in unnecessarily high power consumption. For at least the aforementioned reasons, there exists a need in the art for improved image processing systems.